“A country that is still very poor, with grave structural problems at the levels of public finance, energy and employment, but that is trying to ‘grow’, also following what has now become a significant presence of foreign companies that have begun in recent years to invest, open affiliates and hire local personnel in the country”: that’s the image of Albania today described by Bishop Angelo Massafra of Scutari and President of the Albanian bishops”. Albania is a country, he continued, in which the cliché “of the rubber dinghies [packed with clandestine emigrants], the shocking expression of intolerable social pressure, has practically disappeared, but in which many areas of poverty and underdevelopment remain”. Bishop Masafra was speaking on his return from the 6th meeting of the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of South-East Europe, held in Corfu, in Greece. “From a religious point of view he said a certain revival may be noted. On 26 February we celebrated National Seminary Day, thanking God for the gift of some fifty seminarians and religious engaged in pastoral work. We must also give thanks for the considerable presence of women’s religious communities, some thirty in all, that contribute to the work of catechesis, education and charity”. According to the bishop of Scutari, a field of particular apostolate for the country is disseminating knowledge of the social doctrine of the Church. “Thanks to the help of the Holy See and some Bishops’ Conferences, as well as lay organizations, we are beginning the translation of the ‘Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church’. The first encyclical of Benedict XVI has also been translated and distributed among priests, religious and the laity involved in catechesis; it has been well received, and not only in Catholic circles. We are also aiming at better knowledge of the main documents of the magisterium of the Church. During the present month of In March, for example, we are holding conferences to present ‘Pacem in terris'”. Cardinal Josè Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, arrived in Albania in recent days to attend the consecration of the parish church of Blinisht (diocese of Sape), dedicated to the Albanian Martyr Saints, including St. Danakto, deacon of Valona, and St. Astio, bishop of Durazzo, both of them persecuted under the emperor Trajan two thousand years ago. Apart from them, the church is dedicated to other Albanian martyrs, while an act of commemoration recalled the 40 witnesses of the faith killed sixty years ago during the Communist dictatorship, for whom the procedures for the cause of beatification have now been begun. One of them was Father Daniel Dajani, a Jesuit priest who came from Blinisht.
